


DIABOLICAL

by chaotic_orangegod, vitaminds



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Blood Play, Brainwashing, Devil!Sebastian, Drug Use, Gore, Horror, Incest, M/M, Mind Control, Murder, Mutilation, Rape, Somnophilia, TWs will be in the author's note at the start of every chapter, Witch!Ciel, children get murder, cult elements, dont ignore the tags and then get mad at us, loosely based on The VVITCH, noncon, we won't give a shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:42:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaotic_orangegod/pseuds/chaotic_orangegod, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitaminds/pseuds/vitaminds
Summary: Ciel's father is a murderer. Ciel's mother has lost her mind. Ciel's twin brother is buried in their backyard. Ciel's zombie dog is talking to him. But no one in Marsh believes him. Maybe he's the crazy one, or maybe he's cursed.When the devil appears to him, offering a life far more appealing than the one he lives, Ciel is more than ready to negotiate. Even if it means signing away his life. He's willing to do anything for satanic power and the chance to live deliciously.





	1. LIVE DELICIOUSLY

**Author's Note:**

> TW: rape, noncon, incest (Ciel/Vincent)

“My twin brother is buried in the yard.”

The old red clock behind Mrs. Beverly’s head ticks down the minutes. It keep a steady rhythm. Incessant. Unchanging. Uncaring of the atmosphere in the room, which is, aside from the clock, quiet. And too warm. Ciel’s thin white shirt sticks to his back and feels like a layer of skin he has to peel off. He’s glad he changed it last minute before heading to school. The wool sweater his mother pulled over his head that morning would’ve killed him via heatstroke. Which makes him wonder if that was her intention. 

She said the sweater is perfect Christmas attire. It’s October. But she has been a little unhinged as of late, putting salt in her water and lemon in her coffee. Reading books backwards and upside down. Harmless little things that she would laugh at and dismiss should anyone point them out. “Oh, I’m just in a dazed,” she would say.  _ I’m just in a daze _ has become such a common phrase around the house that Ciel finds himself mumbling it with her. 

Mrs. Beverly is frowning at him, because he is fidgeting, picking at the hangnail on his thumb and making a mess of blood stream onto his jeans, or because he just told her where he hid his brother’s body. Ciel can never tell with her. Most adults make some sort of facial expression when he tells them he watched a murder and aided in covering it up, but Mrs. Beverly just nods and frowns like he told her another rainstorm is coming. Which one is. A rainstorm is always coming in Marsh. 

“That’s not funny, Ciel.” She picks up a textbook, Senior Calculus, and shoves it against his stomach. “Go home.”  _ Property of Marsh HS  _ is scrawled over the spine in black sharpie. 

He’d always hung around after the bell dismissed students for the day. Doesn’t want to be at the house unless he absolutely has to. And not even then. He’s gotten into the habit of frequenting the local diner during the summer months when hiding at school isn’t an option. He used to take his meals at the dinner table, along with the rest of his family. But ever since his mother got ill, Father allowed him to eat wherever he likes, given that he cleans up after himself. Once, he left a dirty plate of spaghetti on his desk because he was too tired to take it downstairs. Father found it the following morning and denied him food the rest of the day. 

As Father’s punishments go, that particular one isn’t so bad. Ciel can stand fasting for a day. He would take that over all the others. 

“Why don’t you ever believe me?” he asks. He’s never asked before. Because it doesn’t matter. Because he already knows the answer. His math teacher eyes him and he can’t tell if that’s sympathy in her eyes or exasperation. 

“Because you don’t have a twin, Ciel.” She stands, walks to the door and holds it open for him. The hallway it leads to looks dark from where he’s standing. Like it is a void and not another part of the school. He bids Mrs. Beverly goodbye. 

She’s right. He  _ doesn’t  _ have a twin. Not since Father killed him and made Ciel bury him in their backyard, right next to the family dog. It is cruel to make your child bury his sibling. It is even crueler to make your child bury his twin. Ciel, who was crying more than he has ever cried in his entire life, felt like he was being made to bury himself. Still feels like that. Like half of him is underground, mouth full of dirt, fingers raw from scratching at the wooden box he’s been shoved inside of. He doesn’t know which half is doing better. 

How vile is it to be envious of your dead brother? Which of the cardinal sins does that fall under? 

There are still some students scattered here and there throughout the building. They don’t spare him any mind as he dashes between them. The textbook feels like a boulder in his arms and with each step he takes towards home, the damn thing gets heavier and heavier until it is impossible to carry. He drops it onto the sidewalk, still five blocks from his house, and drops himself right beside it. 

Then the rain comes. Soft at first, then in buckets. It rains sideways, hitting his neck and arms so hard he feels like it will leave marks behind. Little red dots all over his skin. It doesn’t, of course, because it’s just rain. But Ciel runs to cover anyway, completely abandoning his textbook. 

He runs until he’s at a bus stop, one of four in town. They never get used. The only bus that runs through here stopped cycling years ago. Sometimes, it seems the outside world has locked itself away from Marsh. Planes stopped appearing overhead too. Even the train tracks are barren, fill with weeds and deer. 

There is a curse on this town. Ciel used to think the curse is just on him. On his family. Maybe it was, then it spread to everything else like a plague or a fire. And now everything in Marsh is sick and charred. And the rest of the world avoids it in fear of getting infected. 

That terrifies Ciel, because that means he will never be able to leave. 

There is something watching him. Black and large like a shadow in the corner of his eye. It slips in and out of his peripheral, weaving between the trees behind Freddy’s Sweets and Sours, just at the edge of the woods. Ciel doesn’t turn his head. Doesn’t look directly at it. He read somewhere that you should never look at shadow people. That it’s best to ignore them if you want to continue living any sort of life. Ciel’s life isn’t any sort of living, but he abides by the rules given to him when in regards to the supernatural. 

He keeps his gaze away from Freddy’s on the border of town. Stares instead at the convenient store way down the street, the winding road full of potholes greedily gathering up rainfall. Driving down there is a hazard, so rarely anyone does it. They would rather go to the market on Washington Street, be closer to the heart of the town. Marsh is like one of those puzzles they give out in goodie bags, the 3D mazes with a tiny metal ball you’re supposed to rotate and turn until it clumsily rolls past the plastic barriers and end up on the other side. Ciel always gets those balls stuck in the center. 

Whoever is rotating Marsh must also suck at mazes. 

Everyone wants to leave. All the kids in school have such big plans that involve a different city, a different state. But year after year, they end up where their parents did, working the same family job, stuck in Marsh like the rest. 

A shadow jumps onto the street, right in the intersection of Earnest and Fern. Its large black form throws Ciel off, but when his heart recovers, he realizes it’s just a dog.  _ His _ dog. Which has been dead for a week. And a month before that. And three years before that. 

The first time Sebastian died, the twins were fifteen and upstairs arguing about whose turn it is to walk the dog. They had been going at it for quite some time, but came to a sudden and startled quiet when a thundering thump, followed by a whine, echoed throughout the old house. At first, they’d thought poor Sebastian had fallen down the stairs. He was old, and somewhat blind. The cataracts in his eyes were the primary cause of many stumbles and tumbles. But when the twins raced down the stairs and saw a pool of blood staining the wool carpet and the ax in Father’s hand, they knew. They buried him in the backyard under a solemn night. 

He rose for the first time a year later, three nights after Ciel buried his brother. Then he was hit by a car a month ago. Then strangled by Father last week. 

In sophomore year, the former English teacher made them all read  _ Pet Sematary _ . And when Sebastian came back for the first time, Ciel thought his family’s backyard was magical. But his twin never came back, neither do all the birds and squirrels Sebastian kills and Ciel buries. Nothing comes back but the damn dog. Which leads Ciel to believe the dog is cursed. 

A lot of things are cursed, according to Mother. And her paranoid skittery behavior rubs off on him more than he likes. The town is cursed. The house is cursed. The dog is cursed. Ciel’s whole life feels like one big joke most times. 

Sebastian barks once, then comes pattering over. Mud and rain puddles splosh under his paws. He has always been obedient, and Ciel had mourned him when he first died. But now he is a nuisance and a bit horrifying. He doesn’t sleep, but stays on Ciel’s bed to stare at him endlessly throughout the night. He refuses to eat dog food, and Ciel doesn’t really know if he eats at all. Once, he saw the dog trampling around the town cemetery, viewable from Ciel’s bedroom, and digging up various plots, which was such a disturbing sight that Ciel had to shut his curtains for weeks after. 

Sometimes, Ciel thinks Sebastian can talk. Not like humans do, but not like dogs should either. His voice, if it is  _ his _ , is deep and rumbling, like the sound can’t quite come through right. His mouth doesn’t open when he does it, but he stares in a way that makes Ciel want to climb out of his own body. 

He only talks at night. And when he does, they are always alone. Ciel can’t tell any of this to his mother, or even to Mrs. Beverly, who has heard enough insane things from him to warrant a call to the local asylum. 

It is now, under the drumming of the rain, that Sebastian speaks again. The sound of his voice is such an aberration that Ciel startles, leaving the dryness of the bus stop and hopping into the rainfall, ten feet away from the dog. It looks at him, in quiet regard, and lies down to lick clean its paws. 

“What did you say?” Ciel asks, then regrets. The dog does not look up at him, barely pays him any attention. But it does speak again. 

“ _ I asked, aren’t you tired? _ ” Its voice is the rumbling of the earth and the signaling of a catastrophic end. 

“Tired. Of what?” Ciel answered, wary. He’d never had a conversation with Sebastian before. The dog would talk. Ciel would stare at it like they’d both lost their damn minds, and life would go one after half an hour or so had past. 

The rain is soaking through his clothes and filling up his shoes. He waddles back to the bus stop bench, still keeping as much distance between himself and the dog as he possibly could. 

“ _ This life. _ ” Now the dog looks at him. Before his death, his first one, his eyes had been dark brown, like most dogs. Now, his eyes are like dying stars. Like nebulas. Like ultraviolet radiation coloring the darkness bright. Like no living thing’s eyes should be. “ _ Aren’t you tired? _ ” 

Yes, Ciel thinks. Yes. He’s tired. He’s exasperated. Enervated. Exhausted. He’s ready to put down the metaphorical boulder or let it crush him entirely. Anything to keep from rolling it up the hill over and over. 

Ciel kneels, looks Sebastian in his labyrinthine eyes. “What can you offer me?” 

The world spins and spins and spins until it is a collision of colors and all its lines are blurred. Then the strings of the universe correct and realign themselves in a spectrum of wealth and affluence. Ciel sees everything he has ever wanted. A city far from Marsh. Beautiful clothing. Exotic sweets. But also the cost of his wishes come true. Death and decay. Flesh and bones and blood. Whatever is left of his innocence. He sees himself fucking the devil, and all of his satanic minions. He sees the barren emptiness in his eyes. The gore of bodies surrounding him. The blood painted on cave walls and the heads on fingers of demons far larger than the Earth. The macabre way those monsters call to him, a seductive song that has him flattening the palms of his hands against his head in a useless attempt at keeping the noise out. Siren songs, but from the lips of anathemas. 

He screams for the flurry of images to stop, falls on his knees as he would before a priest. And when they finally do, when there is nothing left but the tapping of rain and the ringing in his ears, he empties his stomach on the sidewalk. The bile mixes with the rainfall and slips down the storm drain. 

Sebastian looks at him. Looks and looks like he’s trying to see through to Ciel’s soul. He licks the fur around his mouth and shows all his canine teeth. They are far larger than they should be. Everything about him is wrong. Too big. Too dark. Too horrifying. The boy stumbles backwards. Runs. He doesn’t know if the dog chases him. Is too afraid to look. He has always known the devil is in Marsh, but he sees it now and it scares him so much more than anything ever has. So he runs. Doesn’t stop running until he is in his room, door shut behind him. And even then, in the heart of his house with every door behind him locked, he still feels Sebastian’s nebula eyes on him. 

It takes him ten minutes to slow down his breathing and another five to let go of his inhaler. “There are no monsters here,” he whispers to himself. His room is dark, despite the strings of light above. There are shadows in every corner, and Ciel gives them all a hard stare while he maneuvers to his bed against the wall. Shadows are where monsters hide, his mother had once told him. Ciel knows she’s right, but monsters exist in all spectrums of light. She doesn’t understand that. 

In her delusions, Rachel Phantomhive spent weeks covering every inch of the house in lamps and candles. Christmas lights hang from Ciel’s ceiling, along his window sill, and into his closet. There used to be more. Two bedside lamps and a few large candles that smelled like vanilla on his dresser. He took them down a while ago, but left some of the Christmas lights up. As far as Ciel knew, the strings of reds and blues and greens had never been used for anything else. 

Mother hadn’t always been like this. In her youth, Rachel Phantomhive was a beauty pageant queen and the town’s darling, beautiful and iridescent with her strawberry blonde hair and sundresses. She is still beautiful, but there is a darkness about her that has long devoured all her warmth. Rachel Phantomhive is iced cold, and her touch feels like death. 

Ciel loves her and fears her. Sometimes, he fears her more than he fears his murderous father. Unlike Vincent, her madness holds hands with uncertainty. Talking to her is like riding a roller coaster in the dark. Eventually, Ciel figures out where the lows and highs are, but then the course changes and he has to map it out all over again. Lately, he’s taken to avoiding her altogether. Cat and mouse inside a giant house is harder than it sounds. Rachel moves like a ghost. 

He puts down his backpack, looks up, and she’s there in the hallway outside his room, cast in the reds and blues of the lights. He tries not to look at the way she’s smiling, her lips stretched too thin. If she’s been eating, it doesn’t show. Her once perfectly fitted powder blue dress hangs loose on her frame. He could see her collar bones jutting out under the neckline. 

“Mother.” He doesn’t remember hearing the door open, but he knows he’d locked it. “Mother, how did you -”

“I baked cupcakes, darling.” Her voice is sweeter than honey, the way it has always been. She holds out a silver tray, on it, a dozen perfectly frosted cupcakes. “Buttercream and chocolate, just the way you like it.” Ciel plucks one at random, but sets it on his desk. 

“Thank you, Mother.” She’s still standing in the hallway, feet perfectly together with the toes lined up against the invisible line that separates Ciel’s room from the hall. She never enters his room, not since she’d gotten ill years ago. If she did laundry, which she doesn’t do anymore, she would stand in the hall with the basket in her arms and ask him for his clothes. At first, Ciel thought it was just a thing parents do to show they respect their child’s privacy, but it has been years, and she has never stepped even a centimeter past his door frame. 

“How was school, darling?” she asks. Her eyes follow him around the room. He kicks off his shoes and tosses them into the closet. They hit a box he’d hidden there before tumbling to the ground. 

“It was fine,” he says, pulling a folder of papers and flyers from his backpack. He takes a composition notebook out, hesitates, then chucks it into his closet. “Mother, can you help me with something?” A quick scan of the room tells him his father has been in here. The books on his desk have been rearranged. In the hallway, Mother nods. “Can you help me find my physics notebook?” 

She searches the content of Ciel’s room with her eyes, not once appearing to come closer. Her back is straight, her legs together, like she is standing in service at church. “Where did you last left it, dear?” Her eyes linger on the photo of the twins, both of them dressed in matching vests and bowties. 

“I don’t remember. Can you come help me look?” She stares at him, her blue eyes black under the dim hallway lights. Five minutes of silence passes. She doesn’t move. Ciel is still rustling through his backpack in pretense of earnest searching. “Mother?” 

Nothing. 

He stops. The house is quiet. The air is still. His heart is the loudest thing of all. 

“Why won’t you come in my room, Mother?” She doesn’t answer. He asks again, louder this time. Again, louder. Louder, until he’s screaming. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t breathe. He’s panting like the air had been punched out of him. His face is red and his palms burn from how hard he’s digging his nails in. 

“The notebook is under your bed, Ciel.” He frowns, dips down to search for himself. Surely, the marble composition notebook lies in the darkness under his bed. When he stands up, Mother is gone. 

He runs to the closet, moves aside the shoes he’d thrown in, and rummages for the notebook he’s holding in his hands. It doesn’t make sense. He  _ knows _ he threw it in here.  _ He threw it in here _ , so how did she see it under his bed? His hands shake. The light in the hallway blinks. 

Ciel stands up and slams his bedroom door shut. 

He does a breathing exercise he saw on TV. Count to ten. Take deep breaths. Imagine your happy place. His eyes close, but all he sees are the images Sebastian had shown him. The blood and the gore. His heart feels like there is a hand wrapped around it, squeezing so tightly that it might collapse into a pool of blood in his chest. 

Count to ten. Deep breaths. Count to ten. 

Someone knocks on his door. 

“Ciel?” He throws it open and comes face to face with his father. Vincent Phantomhive is not a very large man, but he is tall and most importantly, he has the ability to make you feel very small. 

His tie is loose. It’s red today, dotted with little black bumble bees. He tugs it off and tosses it onto Ciel’s bed before pushing his way inside the room, but with less aggressive haste than usual. He must have had a good day at work. Bad days are the most common, with really good days as outliers. The average day sees him tucked away in his office until hunger can no longer be thwarted off. 

“Did I just see your mother?” he asks, sitting himself on the edge of Ciel’s bed and undoing the laces of his leather shoes. Father is wearing his gold watch today. Yesterday, he’d gone on a rampage around the house in search of it. His rummaging makes Ciel feel as if the walls of the house extend forever. It is a common occurrence within their household. Father loses things often. Ciel theorizes that Mother is the sole cause. He caught her once, stuffing tie clips into the cookie jar. 

“Something is off with her,” Ciel says. He doesn’t expect his father to really be concerned, the way  _ normal _ people are supposed to be. You hear there’s something wrong with your wife, and you take her to the doctor’s. You hear there’s something wrong with your wife, and you help her. 

Marsh is lacking a lot. It doesn’t have a McDonald’s. Or a 7-Eleven. The closest hospital is half an hour into the city, but no one bothers making the trip. People don’t get deathly ill or gravely injured in Marsh. They disappear or turn up dead. Neither thing a hospital can really help you with. Vincent is the closest thing the town has to a doctor. He has the degrees hanging up in his practice, framed in gold and polished once a week. But Ciel has a strong inkling that it’s all a farce. 

“There is nothing wrong, Ciel.” Vincent says as he’s peeling off his clothes. “Come here.”

For those of you who did not pass high school astronomy (or are deprived of globes in your lives): the Earth is tilted on its axis. It doesn’t feel like it is, but it is. Our planet mostly sits at a 23.5 degree angle, but it might as well be entirely upside down. Right now, in moments like these, Ciel feels every movement of the celestial rock we call home. He feels like the entire world is one big slippery hill and he has no friction to slow his momentum. None of his movements are of his own volition. 

So while he’s pulling his shirt over his head, his mind is on that hill. On the Earth spinning at lightspeed. On the world moving too fast. 

It’s better than thinking of Father’s cold, bony hands. Father’s ethanol breathe. Father’s lidded eyes and murmurs of praise when Ciel moves just right. 

Sometimes, he does math problems in his head. Figures out the measurements of some imaginary triangle. If A squared plus B squared is equal to C squared, what is A. 

Sometimes, he pictures Vincent as someone else. A handsome stranger. An old lover. 

Never does he let himself live in the moment, because that makes him not want to live at all. 

He swears he’s not suicidal. He just wants more than this. More than being fucked by his father and mourning his murdered brother and fearing his sick mother. More than an entire town of people who look at him with pity yet vacant eyes while insisting he’s being too dramatic. More than this. More than Marsh. 

When he finally comes back to his body, he’s surprised to find tears on his face. Father is still touching him, caressing his thigh and kissing his neck. 

“Ciel.” Father says his name so tenderly, but it sounds like a plague on his tongue. Like the devil calling Eve to his apple tree. “Alright?” 

Things haven’t been alright in years. Ciel can’t remember the last time he’s been any semblance of  _ right _ . If he had a taste for it, he would be smoking a cigarette right now. In movies, that seems to be the thing to do after sex. Of course, Ciel doesn’t know anything about normalcy. Especially when it comes to sex. Or intimacy. Or a father-son relationship. He rolls over and grabs his pills from the bedside table. 

“I saw the devil today.” The words come out of his mouth so casually that it stills him for a moment. All at once, he feels an urgent need to pull the covers over his body. 

“You sound like your mother,” Father says. He yawns, stretches, climbs out of Ciel’s bed. His limbs are long and lanky. He is a dogwood tree. 

“He spoke to me.” Father laughs, voice booming and body shaking. Ciel has never once seen him laugh with sincerity. Everything Father does is a mirrored image of someone else, but without the sentiments. 

He dresses and lumbers out of the room, leaves the door wide open behind him. Ciel also climbs out of bed, then immediately into the bathtub, where he sits for an hour or so. The silence fills his ears and makes him feel like the loneliest person in the world. So he wallows in it as long as he can. 

Dirt still sticks to him when he leaves the tub. It sticks to him when he towels off. When he pulls on a new t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and his backpack, empty of his books but filled with a water bottle, a flashlight, and cupcakes which he grabs on the way out. 

The sky is dark by the time Ciel reaches the edge of the forest that separates Marsh from the rest of the world. Somewhere within, an owl hoots and crickets chirp. It’s unusually warm for an October night. The wind feels like it carries heat from a fire. He flicks his flashlight on, and steps carefully past the tree line. Marsh, quiet and sleepy, watches behind him. It’s little lights flickering like blinking eyes as he dives deeper and deeper into the abyss of pine needles and elm. 

The sky is dark. The world is quiet. And Ciel can feel his heart as if it is trying to break from his body and leave him to fend for himself. The world is dark. The sky is quiet. 

Something darts by. 

It is quick, perhaps a fox, but black, like a wolf. 

“Sebastian?” Ciel shines his flashlight on the pines around him. Maybe he’ll find a face, he thinks. Maybe this is how he dies. How all the children who go missing dies. A quarter of his class is gone. When Wendy went missing, she was the first, the town was frantic. People flooded the edge of the forest in search. Then a month passed, and everyone went on as if Wendy had never existed to begin with. Her locker is right next to Ciel’s. There used to be flowers and pictures taped to the metal. 

“Sebastian?” he calls again, quieter. Meeker. Quickly realizing he has nothing to use as a weapon against a monster, if there really is one. 

Something darts by again. It’s treating him like prey. He’s seen cats and wolves on the hunt on those nature documentaries. The ones narrated by that old British man. The predators usually go for the legs first. 

“I’m not scared.” He half expects the forest to laugh. “I’m not scared.” 

“There is nothing wrong with being scared.” Ciel whirls around, nearly dropping his flashlight. It’s Sebastian, only not really. This dog is bigger, it’s fur is sleek black and peppered with flecks of pine that shines under the moonlight like stars. It has horns. Four. All branching out like deer antlers, but his are red and dripping blood onto the forest ground. He dips his head as if bowing. 

Ciel wants to run his hands through the fur. Would it feel like grazing the stars? 

“Are you running away?” Ciel stares at him. At his dark eyes, which look so much like Sebastian’s eyes. Ciel knows that this isn’t his dog. He buried his dog, and something else stretched out in its skin. 

“I’m not… I came to find you.” He doesn’t really know what he had intended to do. He knows he needed to leave his house. He knows he can’t stop thinking about that afternoon. But he doesn’t know what he is doing here. In the cursed forest. In the middle of a cursed night. 

“Now you’ve found me.” Somewhere, deep in the forest, the world is burning. Ciel can smell the ash. Under the devil’s gaze, he feels like  _ he _ is the one on fire. 

“I want to negotiate,” he says. “What can you give me?” 

“What do you want?” He feels like he is on fire, but the fire does not burn the traces of Father’s touch. He thinks of his mother, her unsettling smiles. His brother, cold in the ground and calling his name. His friends, all missing, never to be found. His teachers, who never believe him. 

“To burn.” The devil bares its teeth. Ciel looks at him, volcanic ash in his heart. “I want to burn.” 


	2. THE TASTE OF BUTTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: gore, murder, depiction of violence

Ciel used to go to church. Every Sunday, at twelve in the afternoon, the twins would dress in button-up shirts and khaki shorts, black socks and black dress shoes. Mother would do their bow ties while Father finished catching up on the Sunday paper. Marsh news is always the same. The cover is of whatever good deed took place that week. The murders got moved to the middle pages a while ago. There’s an ever growing list of “Missing” in the corner on the back. 

Father doesn’t read the paper anymore. They still get delivered; everyone in Marsh gets the paper. Just like how everyone in Marsh goes to church. Everyone in Marsh gets coffee from Abberline’s. Everyone in Marsh stays in Marsh. 

Ciel has started to use the discarded newspapers as a way to keep track of the murders. The reporting is spotty, inconsistent. He’s pretty sure he can drum up a better article than whoever is currently behind the keyboards. Today’s murdered/missing persons list is empty, which makes Ciel do a double take. Even if it doesn’t get updated, the list is always there. Thirteen names. All children. Ciel has them memorized and tapped to the wall above his desk. His twin’s name isn’t on there. His twin’s name isn’t anywhere. 

He rubs his eyes. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Or the caffeine. He’s been drinking too much coffee despite hating the taste and the way it makes his heart stutter. He rubs his eyes until the room is red and little stars fill his vision. 

The list is still empty. 

_ Fill it in_. 

He goes to the kitchen. The house is as silent as the afternoon. The entire town is at church. All the lights are off. They don’t need to be on, the sun rays through the windows are enough, but the lack of florescence makes Ciel uneasy. 

He’s operating on instinct now. Maybe that’s the wrong word. Not _ instinct_. Something else. It pushes and pulls at him like his limbs are tied to strings. It pulls and pushes. He keeps walking to the kitchen. 

Mother is in the living room, adjacent. The TV is on but she isn’t watching. It just sort of buzzes in the background. A game show host is naming trivia categories. “Fill it in!” The audience is clapping. The contestants are shouting over each other. The space between the stairs and the kitchen is now miles apart. It takes Ciel ten years to walk. 

“Fill it in!” 

The audience doesn’t clap this time. The contestants are silent. Ciel turns to look at the TV. The host’s face takes up the screen. He doesn’t blink. His smile is a crescent moon. 

“Fill it in!” 

Ciel grabs a knife from the kitchen drawer. 

Mother is still on the couch. She’s gone silent as well. There is nothing else but the sound of his breathing and the game show host’s chant. Fill it in. Fill it in. _ Fill it in_. Ciel stands behind the couch, locks eyes with the host. The entire world is spinning again, but he’s rock solid. Feet rigid. 

Mother turns at a snail's pace to smile at him. Her eyes aren’t the right color. Her lipstick is like blood. Her skin looks like it’s melting, as if someone had molded her from clay and now she is finally showing some wear. “Do you need something, dear?” 

He plunges the knife into her mouth. It gets stuck somewhere in the back of her skull, and she’s screaming. _ God_, she’s screaming. The sound is a mixture of boiling water and a high pitched screech. He wants to cover his ears but the knife won’t budge. The blood is gurgling in her throat and spilling like water from a faucet. He’d cut her tongue in half. It splays open, but there’s too much blood to see clearly. Her eyes are wide blues. As if she’s surprised. As if she hasn’t seen this coming. She’s trying to talk to him. Her hands are around his wrist and he’s still trying to shove the knife in all the way. The tip is starting to protrude out of the nape of her neck, right in that soft spot between the two branches of flesh. Her jaw is ripping from the rest of her face. Ciel uses both hands to push now. 

“Get off me, Mother,” he grunts. “Don’t be difficult.” She’s still sobbing, screaming, hysterical. She hasn’t shown this much humanity in _ years_. Funny how it’s all coming out now, while she’s dying. 

The knife is too big and the blood is making his hands slip. He puts a hand over her face and uses the leverage to pull the blade out. She slumps backwards off the couch and crumbles onto the carpet. Blood is everywhere. It smells like a fistfull of pennies. 

She’s saying something still. So resilient. It’s almost admirable. Her blonde hair is orange from the blood. The sounds coming from her mouth just sound like running water and guttural screams, but he can make out the occasional “please” and “no, no”. He’s not sure if she’s asked “why” yet. People getting murdered in movies always ask why. Why are you doing this? Why me? 

Ciel doesn’t know why. He stabs her in the chest. He stabs her again. Again. Again. Again. He’s breathing so hard he thinks the rest of the world might finally hear him. Mother isn’t moving now. She isn’t screaming anymore. There’s so much blood. He could paint the entire room with it. Cover every wall in red and still have enough to spare. 

Blood pools in her eyes, colors them violet. He doesn’t know what makes him do it, but he jabs two fingers into both socket and curl them, pulls until her eyes are rolling in his palms. He can’t tell if she’d dead yet. Doesn’t even really know what makes a person _ dead_. 

Biologically, it’s when you lose all brain functions and your heart stops beating. When your body shuts down and can’t ever restart. Spiritually, it’s when your soul departs. 

Ciel looks at the bloody eyes in his hands. The stains on his shirt. The body at his knees. He throws up. He doesn’t remember eating anything that morning, but he’s throwing up so much. It’s a dark green, and it burns his throat. It feels like he’s emptying his stomach of everything, organs included. 

He’s not surprised at all when the slimy green bile starts thickening and darkening into clumps of black pill bugs. They squirm and crawl over Mother’s body. One of them is stuck in his throat so he has to reach inside and dig with his fingers until he finds it. When he finally does, he’s coughing and coughing and coughing. 

A hand pats his back. 

“Are you alright?” Mrs. Beverly is squinting at him, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun. A gust of wind nearly knocks her little white hat from her head. Behind her, the church bells chime, announcing the afternoon mass. 

Ciel glances down at his feet. No bile. No blood. No icky black isopods. No Mother. He could still feel her warm eyeballs rolling in his palms. 

“What am I doing here?” He doesn’t expect his math teacher to have any answers. He’s too busy racking his brain for memories of the last 24 hours to pay attention to whatever she comes up with anyway. The most important question: did he murder his mother? The memory is so vivid. Too vivid. It has to have happened. But it _ can’t_. There’s no blood on him. What is he _ wearing_? In no part of Ciel’s brain is there a memory of getting up and putting on his old Sunday clothes. He tugs at his bowtie, which looks too perfectly done from this angle that it can’t be his handiwork. 

“Do you want me to walk you home?” his teacher asks. She stops to shoot a worried glance behind her, as if her options, missing church versus making sure her student is not going through a mental breakdown, are evenly balanced. 

“No. I’ll be fine.” He doesn’t want her to see what’s at home. If it really happened. If he really did it. _ Fuck_. What if he really did it? What would Father do? Would he have to kill Father as well? And then what? 

She hugs him, and when they break apart, the front of her white shirt is covered in blood. She doesn’t notice. Ciel digs his nails into his temples, then walks down the church steps. “I’m fine,” he shouts back. 

Mrs. Beverly is already gone. 

The sky is dark now. Clouds have rolled over to cover the sun. Fog and mist settle on the road, like someone took a paintbrush of gray over Marsh. Washed out the town and Ciel along with it. Gray is better than the red. He looks down at his hands again and sees only blood, skin, gore. 

Something squirms inside his mouth, right under his tongue. He shoves his fingers in, digs around in the warmth of his own mouth before pulling out a little black pill bug. It curls up its body between his fingers. Ciel drops it to the ground, and stomps violently down. 

The fog is so thick now that he can’t see more than a few feet in front of him. It reminds him of that book by Stephen King. The one where monsters hide in the thick gray soupy air and plucked humans who dare venture out. Ciel doesn’t read a lot of horror stories, but he likes King’s. His stories are always more than just the formulaic “here are innocent people, here’s a monster, watch them defeat it”. 

Ciel takes ten steps in the direction of home, he thinks. It’s impossible to see with all the fog. Everything is gray. He’s afraid to breathe it in, but he does, and it makes him feel like he’s drinking water way too quickly. 

Red appears in the fog. Just a flash. The silk of a ribbon. Soft cotton sleeves. 

“Mother.” 

Her hair is like the sun. 

“Mother, I…” _ I thought I killed you_. She’s not looking at him. Her eyes on something else, something he can’t see because he’s not as close to it as she is. He steps closer, and she looks different. Younger. Not as tired. Her colors are vivid. Her cheeks are pink. 

His mind tells him she’s dead. She’s a ghost. He’s dead. This is hell. 

“Go home, Ciel.” Mother takes a lipstick from her purse. Cherry red. She’s wearing black gloves. Satin. Dainty lace at the wrists. “Be a good boy.” 

Rachel Phantomhive is Sunday dresses and diamond rings. She’s the mom that comes over with lemonade and diced fruits when you and your brother are fighting over which puzzle pieces go where. Rachel Phantomhive is soft pink lip gloss and white kitten heels. 

Ciel doesn’t know who his mom is anymore. The corpse at home, which has been a corpse long before he made her into one, or the woman standing in front of him in her red pea coat and black dress. She looks at him. There is a pair of cat eye sunglasses perched on her head. She slips them on, then takes his face in one hand. 

“I don’t want you to follow me. Do you understand?” 

He’s back in his room. It’s the middle of the night. He’s wearing pajamas with little white clouds and pale yellow crescents. The moon gives its light in the form of a puddle on the floor. His twin is snoring in the bed beside him. They have their own little beds, but somehow always end up pressed against each other, tangled like they are two strings twisted together by the hands of fate. Ciel, alone, feels more knotted up than he had ever been. 

Mother is standing at the open door, toes lined up against the invisible barrier separating their room from the dark hallway. She has a hat on, even though it is night. Her pale blue dress flutters from the wind sweeping through the open window. 

He holds a hand out and she comes running to him, tears in her eyes, to pepper kisses on his pink, chubby cheeks. He’s ten years old. He doesn’t understand why she’s crying. She picks him up in her arms, and she smells like the raspberries tarts she spent all day baking. 

“Where are you going?” he asks, voice laced with sleep. She tucks him into his bed, pulls his blanket to his chin. The lamps in the room dim on their own and the windows ease themselves shut, but he’s so tired that none of that seem out of the ordinary. 

“I’m taking a little stroll. I’ll be here in the morning,” Mother tells him. Her hands are so warm against his face. He wants to live in that warmth forever. 

“Can we come?” Ciel asks, glancing at his sleeping twin. 

“No. Not tonight.” She kisses him. “Now, sleep. I don’t want you to follow me. Do you understand?” 

He doesn’t. Nothing about this day makes any sense. When she steps into the hallway and disappears from view, he follows. 

The carpet muffles his footsteps, which is good, because Mother seems to be able to hear everything lately. She hums a lullaby as she tips toes down the stairs, then stands in the middle of the foyer, facing the front doors. The house is cold and silent and dark. The shadows are too stark, too much. They move when nothing else does. 

Mother puts her hands to her face, so casually gentle that Ciel is reminded of all those times watching her apply cream to her skin before bed. How she would sit at her vanity and pat her cheeks with dainty fingers, and the twins would sit on the fur rug, a chessboard between them. 

When she pulls her hands away, they are red. Like roses. Like cherries. Like hearts. A scrap of milky white falls from her hand to the ground. Ciel is too far away to make out what it is. She puts her hands back to her face, repeats the process for a full minute. Red fingers. White papers all over the floor. She takes off her coat, her hat. Lets those fall to her feet as well. Then the dress. It isn’t until she begins clawing at her back that Ciel realizes it isn’t paper she’s throwing on the ground. 

Mother drills her blunt nails into the flesh of her back, and tears out a chuck of her own skin. The patch of muscle she leaves behind oozes blood that runs down her bare legs. Ciel gasps, shuffles backwards so quickly that he nearly trips on the rug. 

Moved by the noise, Mother comes sprinting up the stairs. Her face is nothing but two eyeballs and a set of teeth against bloody tissue. She’s screaming at him, but he has his hands over his ears and his eyes are as shut as he can get them. Her hands are warm and wet when they touch his skin. 

A car honks, and Ciel jolts. He holds out his hands, apologizes. The man behind the wheel is Mr. Abberline, the history teacher. He starts to get out of his car, presumably to ask why the fuck Ciel is standing in the middle of the road like a drugged out lunatic with a death wish. Ciel rushes away before that conversation can be had. 

“What the _ fuck_.” He shoves open the door to Freddy’s and is greeted by the scent of candy ribbons and lollipops. He catches his reflection in the pink tinted window. No wonder Abberline looked so concern. There’s blood streaming from his nose. Grabbing a fistful of napkins from the counter, Ciel tries to clean himself up. By the time Freddy comes out from the back of the store, Ciel’s looking less like a mess. 

“Ah! I got a fresh shipment yesterday!” He says that every time Ciel comes in. The box of chocolate bars Freddy plops on the counter nearly shatters the glass. “Brand new. Extra buttery.” 

Ciel buys two, and eats them on the curb outside. 

“I want to negotiate.” A school bus flies past. Ciel pulls his legs closer, clutches his chocolate bars. Sebastian, in his innocent dog form, comes pattering over. 

“Our contract has been negotiated,” the dog speaks. 

“No. I haven’t signed.” 

He breaks a piece off and hands it to the creature. Sebastian sniffs at it in disgust. “What? You’re not really a dog.” Half of the bar is gone. He shoves the other half into his jacket pocket. The street is empty now. It’s nearly five in the evening. He hasn’t been home all day, had skipped class. Father probably got a call from the school. 

“I don’t want you in my head.” Sebastian laughs, the sound is so malicious that an uncomfortable fear settles in the pit of Ciel’s stomach. He focuses his sight on the tree line, the same ones he stumbled out of at dusk, bloodied with a ringing in his ears. 

“That is what it means to be in a deal with the devil.” 

“I don’t want whatever _ that _ was. What you just showed me. I don’t want crazy visions in my head.” He doesn’t need more reasons to believe he’s going insane. He’s already halfway to committing himself to the nearest asylum. 

“They are not crazy visions.” Sebastian starts walking away. Ciel, subconsciously, follows. “You were thinking of your mother.” 

“Those aren’t memories of my mother. My mother isn’t… She’s _ fine _.” They stop in front of the high school. A few students are still lingering in the parking lot. Ciel can make out Lizzie, with her bright pink backpack and white tennis shoes. 

She stopped talking to him the day his twin died. They used to be best friends. 

_ What do you want? _

Sebastian is gone now. He is alone, in the middle of the road with the sun setting behind him. Lizzie is laughing. And her group of friends is laughing. He still remembers her scoffing at him when he showed up at her house in the middle of the night, covered in dirt and blood and crying that his twin is dead. She’d called the police. Who does that?

_ What do you want? _

“I’m not Carrie,” he tells himself. Somewhere, Sebastian mumbles he doesn’t know who that is.

Ciel is angry, and hurt. He has a lot of hatred in his heart, but he’s not a killer. He doesn’t want to be. He wipes his hands, which are wet with sweat and not blood, on his jeans. “I want to go home, to my very normal mother and my very angry father.” 

_ This is not what you want_. 

“Yes, it is. I spent all night trampling around the forest. I don’t _ remember _ what I did. I’m muddy and I smell like blood. I want to go home. I want to shower.” 

Sebastian is here again. Only this time, he isn’t a dog. He has the head of a goat, a body covered in dark black wool and a cloak. His eyes hold flames. “I will show you.” 

And Ciel is back in the dark of last night. In the forest. In the middle of his satanic contract. The ground is cold. His fingers are aching. The chill digs at his bones. He’s naked, covered in dirt as if he’d just been born from the earth. 

“What do I give?” What is he prepared to give? Truthfully? 

The moon hangs overhead, spying. Ciel feels if the rock has a voice, it would be telling him to run. He should run. You can’t outrun the devil, but he should try. Things aren’t really that tough. There are people starving, people dying of untreatable illnesses. His life isn’t really that tough. Things could be worse. 

He looks at the devil, at the horizontal goat pupils and spiraling horns. The big black book the devil holds has an empty page reserved just for his name. A silver knife is tucked between the pages, handle adorned with rubies. 

_ You pay with blood_. 

Ciel knows this before Sebastian says it. Before Sebastian places the knife in his hands. 

There’s a rustling to his left. Something making its way through the undergrowth. Ciel holds his breath. In the corner of his eye, the devil watches. The creature is as still as the giant oak trees. He’s neatly blended into the shadows. His furs and horns are indistinguishable from the leaves and bark of the plants behind him. 

The _ something _ creeps closer. The rustling grows louder. It’s frantic. Searching. Ciel can hear its feet scuffling through the dry grass. The sound is almost as loud as Ciel’s own heart. He hears the monster and his pulse. He feels the cold blade, heavy in his palm. It feels like a sword, and him the boy king not ready to wield it. Or maybe he’s just been reading too many fantasy novels. 

This is real. _ This_. The forest. The knife. The devil lurking behind him. Ciel knows this is real. The monster. The cold. Reality, at this point, is a feeling. 

“I don’t know how,” he says. He sees wings peaking through the pines. Claws the size of his little blade digging at the dirt. He knows what this is. A test of strength, of worthiness. God, he hopes to pass. There’s nothing left if he doesn’t pass. There’s nothing else. He’s more afraid of being rejected than of dying. 

_ I will guide thy hand_. The devil’s touch is hot. Fire. Lava. The sun on his midnight chilled skin. Satan is not horrifying or monstrous. He is seduction and desire. The first cardinal sin. He is greed and lust and envy, and Ciel wants everything whilst in his embrace. He’d kill for it. 

Then, when the monster leaps into the clearing, Ciel drives the knife into its heart. 

Blood does not spurt out like it does in movies. It trickles, down Ciel’s fingers and Ciel’s hand, onto Sebastian’s black claws. If Ciel closes his eyes, it could almost be melted chocolate on his skin. Like the kind his mother used to make for dipping strawberries into. Warm, sweet chocolate. He puts his fingers in his mouth, sucks the sugar onto his tongue. It tastes like chocolate, too. But only if he closes his eyes. 

The devil is still behind him, hands on his naked body. All Ciel wants is warmth, so he leans back. He expected fur, but is met with skin and muscle. The devil pushes Ciel to the ground. 

He falls to his knees and hands, which are shaking from the murder he’d just committed. The body is still right there. Close enough to touch. Satan draws a star into his thigh, a pentagram marking him as property. Ciel takes a handful of dry grass, bites down so hard on his lip that his own blood fills his mouth. It doesn’t taste as sweet. 

The devil is not gentle. Ciel does not expect him to be. But he’s burning. His very soul is on fire. He’s sure it is. Damnation comes hand in hand with pain. It’s almost humanizing, being fucked by the devil. Since his brother died and his parents lost themselves, Ciel has never felt _ anything_. This is the opposite. This is all his emotions being fucked right back into him. Anger at how his life turned out. Sadness at the loss of so much so quickly. And a manic greed for everything that he has been denied. 

He fucks back, meet the devil’s every thrust. There is nothing that doesn’t belong to him now, Ciel thinks. He is Satan’s, and everything is his. 

Sebastian tears away, flips Ciel onto his back, and rams into him again. Every action is violent. There is no fake tenderness. None of Vincent’s sympathetic bullshit. No false I love you’s or Are you okay. No caresses. No kisses. The devil grunts, buries his head in the crook of Ciel’s neck and sinks fangs into the boy’s skin. Blood oozes from the wound. Mixes with the sweat and dirt and blood of the thing he’d just killed. 

The thing he’d just killed… 

His mind is so jumbled right now. Ecstasy is making his body and head feel so numb. His cock is dripping cum onto his stomach. His fingers are tangled in the devil’s dark hair. 

Where is the thing he’d just killed? 

Satan’s body is so warm. And so beautiful. Of course it is. He had been an angel. Ciel wraps his leg around the devil’s waist, desperate to keep him inside. He cries through his orgasm. Spurts sticky seed between both their skin. His eyes roll up at the stars. At the moon and the leaves swaying gently in the breeze. There’s a small smile on his lips, and blood on his chin. 

The devil picks him up, fucks him against a tree until Ciel’s back is raw and bleeding and Ciel’s hole is gaping and full of Satan’s cum. Then Sebastian pulls away and Ciel drops like a pretty doll to the forest floor. He’s still smiling, head feeling like he’d drank too much liquor. 

“You will sign my book,” the devil tells him. He speaks in a whisper, but it is so loud that even though he stands across the clearing, Ciel hears him as if they are skin to skin again. He wishes they are. It’s too dark, but Ciel can make out slivers of pale skin. Dark hair. 

The book is on the ground, by the dagger, by the body. 

The body… 

Ciel throws his hands over his mouth, one over the other. 

The body… 

He stands on shaking legs. Takes a step closer, and then another. And then half of one. 

The monster that he’d killed, the thing that was his test, lies dead on the forest floor. What has he done. He falls to his knees by the book. Takes her cold hand in his bloodied ones. 

“She had come looking for you.” Sebastian picks up the book, brushes it of dirt. 

“Why?” Ciel’s voice does not sound like his own. It is riddled with shakes and tears. 

_ You pay with blood_. The devil takes his hand, forces him to stand. 

“We can’t leave her here,” Ciel screams. Maybe someone will hear him. How deep can these forests be? “It was a monster! I killed a monster. Why is she...” He can’t breathe.

_ I am taking you home_. 

“No! We can’t just… They’ll never find her.” His DNA is all over her. For fuck’s sake, he had sex a foot away from her body. He should clean everything. Or move her. Yeah, that’s smarter. He should move her. Maybe closer to town. Or at least, to the edge of the forest. At the tree line. “They’ll never find her. They’ll just assume she went missing like all the others. We need to move her.” He’s crying now. The devil holds up Ciel’s arms, pulls a shirt over his shivering body like he’s a child and this is all very normal. 

_ Come_. 

The devil does not listen. He drags Ciel away even though the boy digs his heels into the dirt and grabs at every branch in his path. “Please! Let me move her!” He’s screaming. Kicking, even more so as her blonde hair is leaving his line of sight. 

Sebastian picks him up with one hand around his neck, and Ciel goes quiet. “Stop pretending like you would have done any differently if you had known.” 

He puts Ciel down, and this time, the boy follows him back to Marsh. 

Irene Beverly’s body lies cold and alone in the forest clearing behind them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience and all the lovely comments you've left on the first chapter! <3 We hope you've liked this chapter just as much!


	3. I CONJURE THEE

He wipes a hand over his mouth after emptying the contents of his stomach onto the pavement for the second time that day. His bile tastes rancid on his tongue, like battery acid, like poison. He spits onto the grass and slips to the ground, gathering his shaking knees up to his chest. The sunset sky is settling in. Oranges and pinks streak through the clouds. Ciel feels like there is a very large rock inside his right lung. 

Dread accompanies the darkness, and even as the lamps on Earnest street flicker on one by one, Ciel still feels shrouded in the pitch of the Devil’s shadow. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the metal fence behind him. There are still a few people wandering about; most of them hurriedly walking their dogs before the sky turns completely black. 

Ciel can hear chatter coming from across the street, then a few quick whispers. Two pairs of eyes, he can tell even with his own pair closed, stopped to stare him down. He knows whoever they are, they aren’t going to ask him if he is alright. And they don’t. They move on after a minute of uncomfortable staring. 

“It’s the Phantomhive kid,” he hears further down the street. The two girls are the only ones still out when Ciel opens his eyes. They sit on an old bus bench and seem to be gossiping while sucking on their individual popsicles. One of them is still staring at him. He looks away the second their eyes meet. 

“You should go tell him you saw his brother walking out of Mulberry Forest.” The girls giggle. They seem to be his age, probably in some of his classes. Cherry syrup drips from the popsicles down the girls’ wrists even though it’s early October and the night air is chilled. 

Ciel stands up, intent on walking back home. The visions of last night are still clouding his head, and though he hears the girls’ whispers as if they are standing right behind him, underneath their voices is the devil calling him home. 

Not home, where his father and mother are, where his bed is. But  _ home _ , deep in Mulberry Forest. In the clearing where he spilled his teacher’s blood and let the devil fuck him. Ciel doesn’t know which he should be bothered by more. Killing an innocent person or having sex with Satan. Which sin gets you to the deepest pit of Hell? Does it even matter? Ciel supposes he’s already marked for eternal damnation. 

“Do you think there’s really a body buried in his backyard?” He stops. Despite all the lamps, the world seems at its darkest. 

Sebastian sits in the middle of the road, ruby eyes wide as blood moons. He is a collapsar. Ciel realizes that now. 

“Lets go dig it up.” More laughter. High pitched, hyena laughter that sounds less and less like it belongs to two teenage girls. 

He closes his eyes. Sees red dripping down soft pale skin, illuminated by a dim street lamp. Popsicles are always so messy to eat. Ciel remembers being ten years old and begging his mother for ice lollies. He remembers how sticky they are, how easy they melt in the heat. 

The girls behind him are still laughing. He turns to look at them. 

“Where’s your brother buried again?” one of them asks, mocking sympathy. “Someone needs to throw you in an asylum.” They erupt into a fit of giggles like it is the funniest joke in the world. 

Their laughter gets drowned out by the ringing in Ciel’s ears. And Sebastian, who had been sitting behind him, is now on the other side of the street, the two girls between them. 

All Ciel sees is himself at dinner with the devil. 

When the first girl opens her mouth to scream, nothing comes out but a soft gurgle, as if she swallowed too much water and it is trying to climb out her throat. Her half eaten popsicle falls to ground, makes a mess of red and blue syrup on the pavement. Her friend is still laughing, head thrown back so far that it might as well fall off. 

Ciel clenches his fist. Her head topples to the ground, rolls towards the storm drain. Her face is still contorted in laughter. 

The first girl is too caught up in her own horror to realize her friend’s body is standing beside her without its most vital part. The first girl’s skin bubbles like boiling water, and, like the popsicle she was sucking on, melts and drips from her bones to pool at her friend’s feet. 

The ringing in Ciel’s ears doesn’t stop until her body is reduced to a puddle of red organs and chucky flesh. Then the rain comes and the mess washes down the drain. The other girl’s head is still there, as is her body. 

Until Sebastian strolls up and unhinges his jaw, swallows her whole. 

Dinner with the Devil; the only thing missing is the table on the long stretch of pavement between them. Ciel wants to throw up again. He gags and heaves but nothing comes out. He hasn’t eaten anything but chocolate all day. It is beginning to make him feel woozy, combined with the sickening smell of flesh down the storm drain. 

Ciel shoves the sleeve of his shirt against his nose and mouth, and continues down Earnest street. “I don’t feel so good. Can you teleport us home or something?” he asks Sebastian. The dog is padding beside him as if they are on a normal walk before bed. 

“You are too weak.” Ciel knows without pondering too hard that what Sebastian means is not “you are not feeling well so I cannot teleport us anywhere” but “stop throwing up, you useless human”. Is teleportation even a thing? It frightens him that he does not know or can’t even begin to understand the extent of Sebastian’s capabilities. 

Ciel readies his snarky reply, but the dog is gone. Though the dread that walks beside the devil is still present so he must not be far. 

In Christian mythology, which is what Ciel is most familiar with being raised in Marsh, the Devil is the source of all evil. He is every vile and cruel thing about humankind. Satan is the boogeyman in the closet. The shadow in the corner of your eye. He is what adults use to control their kids as well as each other. 

But the Devil was once an angel with giant white wings and a halo of gold. The church doesn’t like to talk about that. Christians seem to have made it their prerogative to pick and choose aspects of their religion that are acceptable, while disregarding everything that doesn’t fit into their narrative. 

Ciel barely believes in God. But the Devil is real and nature must have balance. Right? He looks up into the midnight sky as if God can be found among the clouds. There shouldn’t be any stars tonight. That’s how it goes in horror movies, isn’t it? Whenever evil presents itself, all the light in the world seems to disappear. 

But Marsh’s skies are brilliant with stars. Ciel realizes he’s been walking forever. Trudging, more like it. Dragging his feet behind him like he’s pushing along the heaviest bolder in the world. Phantomhive estate looms in the distance, a reminder that Ciel only has a facade of a home. 

He does not leave the bolder at the door, but carries it with him into the foyer of the house. The old grandfather clock is ticking away at the top of the stairs, right under a picture of their happy little family. Is anything in his life real? 

“Welcome home, son.”  _ Mother _ . She’s standing like a 80’s housewife by the door leading to the kitchen. Ciel is somewhat surprised that her head is still very much attached to her perfectly intact body. The murder scene flashes in his head again and all he sees is himself with his arm down her throat, blood drenching the sleeves of his church clothes. 

“Cookies?” he asks, gingerly picking up a snickerdoodle. Mother used to bake for the school bake sales. He hasn’t seen her leave the house in years. “What do you do when I’m at school?” The snickerdoodle tastes like sand in his mouth. He swallows it anyway. 

“Chores and errands, silly.” Her smile is perfect. Not a single crook in her white teeth. She’s wearing lipstick today. Soft pink like the blush on her cheeks. If you just look at her, you’d think, “Rachel Phantomhive is so pretty.”  _ So pretty _ . Ciel wants to choke her until whatever evil is inside her body crawls out of her too wide mouth. He follows her into the kitchen and stands at the island while she packs the cookies into a glass jar. 

She has her back to him, and he’s staring at her so hard that he forgets to blink. There should be  _ some _ sign that she’s not his mother. That a demon has taken over her body. He’s so sure of it. Maybe a pentagram on her neck or her back? He remembers Mother peeling off her skin at the bottom of the stairs. But that was a vision, some shitty hallucination courtesy of Sebastian. 

Mother is talking to him now, droning about how she wants to revive the greenhouse attached to the library, the one filled with dead plants and empty pots. Before Mother got ill, the greenhouse bustled with herbs and vegetables even during the coldest winters. Ciel liked to sneak pinches of rosemary stems to use as bookmarks. He can still smell the tiny leaves on some of the books in the library though no rosemary plant has survived in this house since Mother started walking again. 

A bird is perched on the windowsill, its body difficult to make out against the blackness of the world outside. But Ciel figures it's a crow. It pecks at the cookie jar, filling the kitchen with a repetitive  _ tink tink tink _ . Ciel feels like he is breathing in winter air. It burns down his lungs. 

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh basil whenever we needed?” Mother is asking. She’s setting out blueberries on a plate. To Ciel, they look like eyeballs. Little blue eyes, rolling on the finest china. Mother coats them in sugar. He winches, feels the grains as if they are being poured into his eye sockets. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans to combat the urge to rub his eyes red. 

The crow is still pecking. 

“I know what you did today, Ciel.” She says it so seriously that he almost breaks his neck turning to look at her. 

_ Tink. Tink. Tink. _

“What?” The sugar grains in his eyes feel more like ants now. When they scurry over his pupil, their little legs temporarily block his vision. But he catches all he needs to. Mother is still standing with her back to him, hands smoothing out the apron she wears over her knee length mint green dress. Father got it for her as a birthday present a few years ago. She was rounder then, a healthy weight. Now, the dress hangs on her thin frame. It was expensive, if Ciel remembers correctly. Some designer thing Father picked up on his trip into the city. 

It has an A-lined skirt with long sleeves that ruffle at the ends and a zipper that goes straight down the middle of the back. Mother tips her head forward to concentrate on her dessert (she isn’t eating, just picking at each blueberry as if looking for any sign of imperfection) which causes her hair to tumble out of the way, exposing the nape of her neck. 

It isn’t a pentagram like Ciel expected. It is, in fact, something so  _ so _ much worse. 

_ Tink. Tink. Tink. _

A second zipper pokes out from underneath the first, but unlike the one attached to Mother’s dress, the second one is embedded into her skin. It starts just below her hair and continues all the way down past the neckline of the dress. 

“Are you listening to me?” She moves and the zipper is obstructed once again by gold hair. Mother does not look angry. Mother has never looked angry. But there is something about the way she is smiling now that makes Ciel wish he’d never come home in the first place. Makes him wish he really did kill her. 

_ Tink. _

He loves her so much. He loves her  _ so fucking much _ . He misses the warmth of her hand on his cheek, the voices she made when she read to him at night. It hurts so bad that he wants to cry, almost starts to. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t know what for.  _ Sorry I keep thinking about murdering you. Sorry I killed my math teacher. Sorry I- _

She whirls around to the windowsill. Grabs the crow still pecking at the glass jar, and stuffs its head into the drain. Mother flips on the garbage disposal and blood splatters onto the marble countertops. The sound of bones being crushed is almost as sickening as the accompanying wet sploosh of the rest of the bird's body being forcibly stuffed into the blades. 

“You skipped school today,” Mother says, still feeding the garbage disposal with crow. “Please do not do that again.” Black feathers that managed to escape the carnage are fluttering in the air. 

“I won’t. I’m sorry.” He backs away, one step towards the safety of the hallway. When Mother turns to look at him, half her hand is red and bloodied. Her fingers had been shaved down to the knuckles. Her skin is in ribbons. Ciel wants to scream. “May I be excused?” he asks, trying his best not to make it obvious that he is searching the countertops for a knife. 

“Of course.” She takes a dish towel and wipes blood off her mangled hand. “You’re a good boy, Ciel.” 

Since his twin’s death, Ciel has always feared his father. Father is a murderer. Father is cruel and vicious and cold. But he is learning more and more that the parent he should really be afraid of is his mother. Or the creature pretending to be his mother. Because her monstrosity is quiet. It lurks in the deep and only surfaces to kill. You see Father and you know to avoid him. You see Mother and you think she loves you. 

He runs to his room and eases the door shut, then locks it. Shoves his desk against it just in case. His body sinks into his bed and he feels the kind of tired that makes your bones ache. He sinks until he goes through the bed and through the floor and through the earth. Until he’s floating in space again, something he only does when Father is inside him. 

Floats in space with his heart and his lungs and his brain floating beside him, all separate entities. Like he is the sun and they are little planets. In moments like these, he is his own solar system. And fuck does it feel good to exist in this nothingness. 

He’s still floating the next morning, sitting in the middle of History class. Apparently, they already got a substitute for Mrs. Beverly’s classes. Nobody’s even looking for her. He makes plans to go into the woods today and find her body. Maybe he can place it a little closer to the treeline. Someone should be able to spot it then, and if they don’t, the smell would be enough to have her found. 

A few boys in the front row are arguing loudly. If it bothers their teacher, he doesn’t make it known. The topic, which Ciel only picks up on because the names of the girls snaps him from his dissociation, is Cherry and Belle. They were supposed to show up to a party last night, but failed to make it. No one has seen or heard from them all day. Lizzy chimes in (in a quiet and quick whisper) that she showed up to their houses before school and their parents haven’t seen them either. 

Mr. Aberline finally tells the front row to hush. “Can anybody tell me what year the Chernobyl disaster took place?” 

“1986.” 

Aberline smiles. “Very good, Ciel.” 

Ciel hadn’t meant to say it outloud. He rarely ever participates. The entire class is watching him now, sneers on some of their faces. Usually, he doesn’t bother trying to contemplate the distaste the rest of his peers have for him, or why they seem to hate him so. Perhaps it is his constant insistence on the murder of his twin, a boy nobody else seems to remember. Or perhaps it is his own distaste for them. Hate breeds hate. It’s not like he cares all that much. Nobody  _ needs _ friends. 

“Maybe the freak knows what happened to Cherry and Belle.” One of the boys in the front rows throws a crumpled ball of paper at Ciel. It barely misses him. 

“What if he’s the reason they’re missing?” That coming from Lizzy actually kind of hurts. He looks at her and she quickly turns away. Her cheeks are red and she’s frowning. Guilt? Her fingers are pulling at the pleats of her skirt. 

“Is she right?” the same boy asks. He has messy blond hair and lettuce stuck between his front teeth. 

“No,” Ciel says. In the front of the room, Mr. Aberline is explaining what happened at Chernobyl. He has images pulled up on the smartboard. “I haven’t seen them.” Cherry’s body is syrup in the drain and Belle’s is sitting in Sebastian’s stomach. Or is Belle in the drain and Cherry in Sebastian? He outwardly shrugs. “How would I know where they are?” Despite Mother insisting that he’s a good boy, Ciel is a very accomplished liar. 

“Cause your creepy dad probably killed them.” There’s some laughter from the rest of the class. Mr. Aberline, who is watching this all go down, looks on sympathetically, but makes no move to intervene. 

“And your creepy family probably ate them for dinner.” A few of the girls gasp and complain about how gross that is. Ciel knows his name now. Peter. 

“We had fish last night.” Ciel flashes a smile. The classroom door opens and a big black dog strolls in. Nobody besides Ciel seems to notice. Sebastian sits in the front of the room. The projector splashes the Chernobyl disaster onto his collapsar fur. 

He doesn’t say anything, just stares at Ciel with two ruby red eyes. And Ciel’s body burns. For a second, he is in space again, but Sebastian is the sun. Sebastian in his human form, naked and standing with his hand out like an offering. 

Peter is still speaking in his mocking voice. There’s real anger behind his words, so maybe he really is concerned for his friends.  _ Good. He should be _ . He should be concerned for himself. Lizzy, face tomato red, interjects, says it’s enough. 

But it’s too late. Ciel takes Sebastian’s offering. 

The sprinklers go off and the class descends into chaos. Students begin to pile towards the door, worried about their clothes and their phones and their hair. Almost none of them notice Peter still sitting stunned in his seat, his scream stuck in his throat. The sprinkler above him spews out acid. 

His skin is covered in boils and blisters. Pus oozes from the corners of his eyes and out his nose. He’s struggling to breathe. Ciel isn’t moving either, still in his seat with his eyes on Peter. 

“H-help me…” his voice comes out raspy and broken, so different from the cockiness of a few seconds ago. Hair is falling from his scalp, leaving behind a bloody and broken scalp. 

Ciel grabs his backpack and stands up from his seat. The classroom is nearly empty now. “You should see a doctor about that.” He dips a hand under the acid rain and is almost surprised to see it only stinging his skin. 

_ Do you see all the fun we could have? _ Sebastian walks up, grinning in that way dogs shouldn’t be able to. He follows Ciel out the door, both passing a horrified Elizabeth on the way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact! The Chernobyl disaster and the publication of the novel IT by Stephen King both took place in 1986. We hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thank you for being patient with us.


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